wall, and saw the arrow lying spent on the rug as Stilcho dragged the Stepson in
past her to drop him in the hall.
Moria hurled herself at the door and slammed it with all her might, shot the
bolt and went and shuttered the drawing-room window in haste, ducking down
beneath to slam the shutters tight and shoot the deadbolts. “Shiey!” she
screamed. “Shutter the downstairs! Quick!”
Something banged back in the kitchens. Outside on the street she heard the
clatter of hooves, the horse still outside the window: it whinnied loud and
stamped this way and that. Hooves struck stone pavings up close to the window;
and another shutter banged shut at the rear of the house.
“Upstairs,” Stilcho said. He squatted over the unconscious Stepson. He had a
knife out and he was cutting away the cloth from around a wound that might have
been high enough to miss the lung but which might have cut the great artery
under the collarbone-there was blood everywhere, on him, on the carpet. Stilcho
lifted a pale face contorted in haste and effort. “The upstairs shutters, woman!
And be careful!”
Moria gasped a breath. “Help him,” she yelled as Cook came waddling out in
panic, one-handed Shiey, who was worse as a cook than she had been as a thief.
But they knew wounds in this house. There were servants who knew a dozen uses
for a knife and a rope. She never looked back to see what Shiey did, only flew
round the newel-post, never minding at all the pain of her sore foot. She had
only the new and overwhelming fear that a shutter might be open, someone might